Fevered toddler waits 14 hours in Victoria emergency room

A toddler with a burning fever was forced to wait 14 hours in a Victoria emergency room before seeing a doctor last week.

Three days before Christmas, three-year-old Parker Coutts was in desperate need of care.

“The fever would go up, go down, then up and then it would go down,” said Parker’s mom Kristi Meredith.

After three days weathering a low-grade fever, Meredith says Parker’s fever spiked. With their family doctor’s office closed and urgent care centres full before even opening, Parker’s mother did what so many are forced to do.

She took her daughter to the emergency room. Overnight, for 14 hours, they waited to see a doctor.

“For 14 hours? That’s outrageous.”

Watch the story in the video below:

No doctor on duty?

Compounding Meredith’s concern, hospital staff told her and her husband for a three-hour window, there was no ER doctor on shift.

Island Health says that’s not true.

“A full complement of physicians were on duty providing care at Victoria General Hospital on December 22 and the average time from triage to seeing a physician was 291 minutes,” Island Health spokesperson Andrew Leyne told CHEK News in a statement.

Meredith describes a full waiting room at Vic General, many, possibly unhoused needing a place to warm up.

CHEK News reached out to the Salvation Army, which is in charge of Victoria’s Emergency Weather Response (EWR). They did not respond to questions about whether an EWR was called thereby opening emergency beds/mats at shelters.

While waiting, Meredith also observed some possible inefficiencies.

“The nurses were able to requisition an x-ray, but they weren’t able to requisition a rapid swab, which they could have easily. Why did we have to wait for a doctor for a rapid swab? It doesn’t make any sense,” said Meredith.

No follow-up

After 14 hours of waiting, a doctor ended up giving Parker a prescription to treat possible Scarlet fever. And despite multiple assurances that someone would, no one from the hospital has followed up on her tests.

“It’s been nine days and I’ve not heard from the hospital yet,” said Meredith. “I called, they said I couldn’t hear the results because I’m not a doctor. So we had to wait for my family doctor to reopen after the holidays.”

Island Health did not answer CHEK News’ questions on its hospital follow-up requirements with patients, or whether those protocols were followed.

More people leaving ER without seeing doctor

In April 2024, Island Health told CHEK News it was working to improve wait times in their ER’s after a Langford mom created a Facebook page dedicated to publicly posting ER wait times throughout Greater Victoria.

Since then, CHEK News has learned the number of people leaving the ER without seeing a doctor in Island Health has increased from 5.1 per cent in January to 5.3 per cent in June.

Their target for 2023/24 is less than or equal to 2 per cent. Their current rates of patients leaving the ER before seeing a physician are more than double that target, something Island Health itself acknowledges through publicly posted performance measures is “significantly outside acceptable range.”

Island Health ‘exploring’ posting ER wait times online

Island Health says they’re exploring something that could help triage people before they even get to the hospital.

Other than posting the average wait time on signage inside the ER, Island Health does not currently communicate wait times externally. However, other health authorities like Vancouver Coastal Health and Fraser Health do.

Island Health says it’s exploring the idea, but also says wait times aren’t entirely reliable.

“The times shown are based on visits that have ended in the last two hours. This means that, at times, the estimated time shown can be based on a very small number of unique patient experiences or data errors,” said Leyne.

Today, Parker is on the mend, but her family’s concern about Greater Victoria hospitals not being equipped to handle the needs of their community, lingers.

“It’s absurd. It is absurd to wait that long,” said Meredith, who says Greater Victoria’s healthcare system needs to improve, and soon.

B.C.’s newly appointed health minister Josie Osborne said in a statement they’re working hard to strengthen primary care in the province “by bringing new doctors and nurse practitioners into the province, and by training more healthcare workers”.

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